Biden's crude play on crude oil

 American Action News:

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For the party in power, a rising gas price is always a troublesome issue to deal with during an election year. For the Biden administration, this becomes an even bigger problem than usual in 2024. In its efforts to hold gas prices down in advance of the 2022 midterm elections, the White House already pretty much used up its main tool to at least provide the illusion of “doing something” to address the issue when it chose to drain about 250 million barrels of oil out of the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This completely inappropriate abuse of the SPR, a national security tool, dropped its volume to around 340 million barrels–just 17 days of U.S. needs, the lowest level in over 40 years.

The White House and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm have since slow-played their sporadic efforts to refill the SPR, adding back just a little more than 20 million barrels in the past 18 months. Just this week, Granholm announced the cancellation of a planned solicitation for bids to add back another 3 million barrels due to the rising price of crude.

Now, with the U.S. already involved in two separate wars in Europe and the Middle East, and China ramping up its saber rattling towards Taiwan, America can ill-afford further abuse of the SPR for another crass political exercise. The existence of these wars, their potential for escalation, and rumors of more wars on the horizon has dramatically increased geopolitical risk, another factor behind the rising price of crude.

This reality leaves the White House with few other tools at its disposal. Also, this week, the OPEC+ cartel reaffirmed its commitment to the limitations on crude exports it has honored since last fall, so U.S. drivers can expect no supply relief there. In addition to all that, the Energy Information Administration recently said it believes US domestic oil production has now leveled off after a very healthy increase during 2023. But global demand for crude oil continues to rise at an accelerating pace despite the best efforts by the climate-alarmist movement to kill it.

Barring a demand-killing global recession suddenly materializing, there is little reason to believe oil prices will cease rising anytime soon. This means U.S. consumers can expect the cost for gasoline to keep rising apace with summer driving season just around the corner.
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The Biden administration deliberately drove up the price of oil and then tried to manage the kickback by using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve rather than increasing production on government controlled sites.  As the next election approaches they have blundered into making the Trump years look like the good old days for drivers.